


There Are Wondrous Things

by SaltCore



Series: We Get What We Deserve [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Major Illness, crunchy meta under a thin chocolatey later of plot, hanzo sugar you're a hot mess, let the people that love you help you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-07 11:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12839982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltCore/pseuds/SaltCore
Summary: The victor spoils, the loser learns.– Amrit BrarA debt, a duty, a decision. Hanzo thinks he knows what he has to do, what the right choice is this time. But it’s never just been about Hanzo, has it?





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This does assume that you've read the first two works in this series, though it leans a little bit more on the first than the second. I haven't been able to run it by anyone who hasn't already heard me yammer about this headcanon I'm afraid, so I can't say how incoherent it is out of context of the series. 
> 
> (Title shamelessly lifted from Tanis and PNWS.)

Blue light bursts out of the scaffolding Hanzo had been perched in. Genji snaps to see on instinct, looking for the line of electric fury as Hanzo’s dragons cut through the sky or, perhaps, a building. His own roils under his skin, lighting up both his synthetic and natural nerves, roused by the sudden arrival of her kin.

Instead of the ethereal, serpentine beasts Genji is expecting, there’s a swirling, formless mass of light and shadow, churning like the ocean in a storm where he last saw Hanzo. He turns inward, projects his confusion at his companion. She lights him up with alarm, twisting fear into his nervous system. Genji reacts immediately, jumping to scale the scaffolding.

She hardly speaks to him, his dragon, his Kodama, though she’s picked up the knack. She prefers to share her opinions directly, letting him sample her moods and feelings. Words are blunt instruments in her mouth, but now she screams _hurry_ directly into his aural nerves.

It’s over by the time Genji gets there, the light gone but the ozone stench of burnt air still lingering. It makes him gag—the last time he’d smelled something like this was the night he died—but he pushes past the reflex. Three bodies are lying on the platform, two of them charred beyond recognition. The third is his brother.

“Hanzo? Hanzo!”

He rolls Hanzo over, and he’s still breathing. There’s blood dripping out of his nose, his ears, his gums. His left hand is burnt, curled against his middle. His tattoo is almost black, all the skin underneath bruised. Usually being near Hanzo floods a strange extra sense he’s gained from his closeness with his dragon, but now there’s hardly anything.

“We need a medic, Hanzo is down!” Genji shouts into his com. He pats Hanzo’s cheek, trying to rouse him. Nothing. He’s limp and still, utterly insensate. Genji sublimates the urge to shake him into to checking for more injuries.

 _What? Why?_ He asks. This—he’s never seen anything like this. It’s like Hanzo’s dragons turned on him. He tastes something like unripe persimmon, fiercely bitter, and he knows he’s gotten it wrong. He’s trying to work out the feeling that’s washing over him from his companion when Angela’s voice crackles over the com.

“Genji, I’m on my way. What happened to Hanzo?”

Genji’s only found a few superficial scrapes, no gunshot wounds or broken bones.

“I’m not sure. He’s unresponsive, he’s got a burn and some minor bleeding.”

Genji doesn’t know how to put what he saw in words that will help Angela work. She, perhaps more than anyone else living, is most familiar with the havoc a dragon can wreak, but she has always shown a careful disinterest in the _how it happens_ , preferring to focus on the _what to do now_. It’s a trait he suspects was carefully honed long before he ended up on her operating table.

“Understood,” she says. She’ll see for herself soon enough.

Genji casts his gaze around. Hanzo’s bow is abandoned across the platform, and his quiver is empty. The other two bodies were clearly ushered into death by a dragon. There’s something distinctive about the way they’re burnt, like a lightning strike seeking to do the most harm rather than chasing lower resistance. Genji remembers the feeling. A phantom pain twinges where his legs should be, and the memory of pain and anger burns.

She reaches in, layering her calm over him and blunting the animal panic. Right—think, focus. He takes a deep breath and tries to calm his thoughts so he can listen to hers. She’s inscrutable at the moment, but still fiercely present. Genji tries to shift through the sensations and feelings. Confliction is all he parses, excepting his own frustration.

  _Protecting him, angry with him_ she says, with notes of exasperation. He is grateful, and a little embarrassed. All these years, and she has to break things down for him. Her fondness feels like a warm breeze, and he feels it all across him, like he used to. At least she’s still patient.

She can play his nerves like an instrument, and Genji, who’s never shied away from an altered state of mind, is perennially fascinated. He feels her worry tighten his chest, where his own makes his stomach twist.  He knows, only because she told him, that Hanzo and the rest of their blood relations don’t feel this, that few of her kind take an interest in their hosts. But if Hanzo’s twins are angry, are _present_ enough to be angry, that can’t be good.

Genji reaches down to lay his fingers on the pulse point in Hanzo’s neck. His heart is still beating, slow and steady. Steadier than his own, certainly. Bursts of chatter crackle over the open channel. From the sound of it Lena got the hard drive, they can begin to fall back.

“I’m below you,” Angela says. “Coming up.”

With the assist from her Valkyrie suit, she can scale the scaffolding almost quickly as him. Her blonde head pops over the flooring, her face a mask of concentration.

“Well, let me see,” she says. She’s always calm under pressure. Genji has never seen her façade of professionalism fall in the field. It’s comforting, really, that she looks no more flustered now than she does administering physicals. Genji moves back to let her work.

Angela’s hands go from the pulse point in Hanzo’s neck, to checking his eyes, then his gums, then his arm. She activates her Caduceus staff with little preamble, the warm yellow glow enveloping Hanzo. Genji can barely make out the sound of German leaking out of her headset, a stream of diagnostic information. Despite being on the business end of the Caduceus, Hanzo is still unconscious. That worries Genji.

“Where are you?” Winston asks over the comm. “We’re ready to pull back. Do you need an escort?”

“We can move him safely,” Angela says. Angela deactivates the Caduceus, leaving them with only the ambient light filtering up from the street.

“We’re falling back to the rendezvous. Be ready to dust off when we get there,” Genji says into the comm.

Genji gathers his brother’s weapons and hands them to Angela. He hoists Hanzo over his own shoulders in a fireman’s carry, locking his cybernetic arm behind Hanzo’s knee and around his wrist. He can make it down the scaffolding with one arm so long as he’s careful.

Caution wars with haste when they get to the ground. Genji desperately wants to get back to the Watchpoint and Angela’s full medical suite. He also can’t afford to be caught. Genji leans on Kodama in addition to activating the thermal overlay in his HUD. She unfurls herself around him, adding her many, many eyes to his own.

She remains quiet, Genji knows that means she sees nothing alarming, and Angela is just as unruffled. They are well away from where any of the fighting was, their path circuitous but safe. Genji still feels like a clenched fist until he finally sees the Orca again.

He starts into a jog for the last hundred meters, hasty now that he’s so close. Angela keeps pace with him. They are the last ones back, and they’re met with concerned stares from the rest of the squad. Winston punches the button to close the hatch and calls up to Lena to prepare for takeoff. 

Angela helps tip Hanzo down onto the stretcher and begins buckling him in for the flight. It’s an ugly feeling, seeing a comrade strapped down like that. Uglier because it’s Genji’s brother, and there’s so much baggage he’s only begun to unpack. He’s not used to thinking of Hanzo as anything less than completely capable, so the visual runs against the grain of his expectations, and he hates it, and he’s scared of it.

Angela takes his hand, squeezes gently. Her fingers look strangely delicate between his. Fine boned and delicate, like her robots in the surgery theater, but those hands are deceptively strong. They’ve held together worse than this.

“I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry.”

In direct opposition to her advice, Genji worries. He worries all the way back to the Watchpoint.

 

* * *

 

It takes a long few minutes of watching Hanzo fight his way through the haze of painkillers before it becomes obvious he’s really coming around. He’d failed few times already, blinking and mumbling for a moment before slipping back under. Genji can’t be sure, but he thinks this is the longest Hanzo has rested in months. Maybe years. That thought had renewed his patience as he’d waited.

Genji fires off a quick text to McCree— _finally awake._ He was worried Hanzo would still be under when McCree returned from his solo recon deployment that night. McCree hasn’t yet responded to the dozen messages Genji had already sent, but that’s not surprising. He took his phone, but the paranoid bastard probably faraday bagged it. He gets weird about his gear bag and EM emissions, has been since that bad run through Adelaide all those years ago. It’ll be shitty for him to find out Hanzo had been hurt and is already recuperating just as he walks onto the transport, but it would be shittier to be blindsided when he gets back on base.  

“Brother,” Genji says softly, lightly, once Hanzo seems to be truly lucid. Hanzo turns to him, wincing as he does. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” Hanzo says automatically, his voice thin and hoarse. Genji reaches for the cup of ice chips and hands it Hanzo. He takes it with his right hand, setting it against his side and picking out a piece. He doesn’t even try to move his left arm.

He’s not fine. He looks like shit, if Genji were to be perfectly candid. Tired and worn thin, his complexion sallow, his movements sluggish. Genji would still think all that if Angela hadn’t shared his charts.

Angela had taken a number of blood samples as part of a battery of tests when they arrived back at the Watchpoint, trying to pinpoint the nature of the damage. His white blood cell count had been low, then kept dropping through the night before stabilizing. Radiation poisoning, his chart said. Too late for iodine to be of much use, she’d given Hanzo a blood transfusion, fortified with her nanobiotics. The burns on his hand weren’t consistent with full body radiation exposure, and the ruptured capillaries were a bit of a mystery, albeit a low priority one; both had improved dramatically overnight bathed in a biotic field, though Hanzo’s response to the biotics was abnormally slow, owing to massive homeostatic disruption.

That was all concerning, but not surprising. Genji had showed up with essentially the same symptoms a decade ago, along with severe trauma. The thing that had stopped Genji cold was the second note, almost an afterthought in the rush to confirm his brother was, in fact, stabilizing. It was jargon, a list of hormones and proteins that was dense and incomprehensible. Angela had given him the short version—it was a list of tumor markers Hanzo had tested positive for. Her imaging hadn’t picked up any masses large enough to be seen with the eye yet, but Athena was crunching the data to check for irregularities.

Genji can still vividly remember the way the sickness had destroyed his father. Those few months from diagnosis to his death had been the hardest Genji had ever lived through, worse than his own recovery. The days in the hospital followed by nights trying to drown out the days, watching his father deteriorate. There had been no saving him, only smoothing his passing.

Even then, even as strained as his relationship with his brother had been, he still dreaded watching Hanzo lie in a hospital bed, wasting away. Dreaded the steady march of bad news all over again, drawing the map of unstoppable metastasization point by point. Dreaded being left behind again.

That old anxiety assails him now. Hanzo isn’t dying—Angela had assured him that the prognosis was good this early, that she was confident she could tailor her nanobiotics to target any malignant cells and destroy them before the first symptoms appeared—but seeing him catatonic in that hospital bed dredged up all those memories and fears he’d tried not to dwell on. Knowing Angela’s expertise was on their side does little to temper the cold knot of fear.

The sound of footsteps makes them both look to the door, Angela’s familiar quick pace echoing down the hallway. She marches through the door, head bent over her tablet and all her hair bound up in a messy bun on the top of her head.

“Oh! You’re awake, very good,” she says. “You should have gotten me, Genji.”

“He just woke up,” Genji says, accepting her tablet as she passes it to him. She pulls a small pen light out of her lab coat and flashes it across Hanzo’s eyes. She inspects his left arm next, asking him to squeeze two fingers she presses against his palm. There’s a brief flash of discomfort before he catches himself, but he doesn’t seem to have any trouble following her instruction. She takes the tablet back and pulls up a chair, sitting primly and arranging her lab coat.

“Are you experiencing nausea?” Angela asks.

“No, no,” Hanzo says. Angela blows a soft sigh.

“That’s good. That’s very good. Your pain?”

“None,” Hanzo says. Angela levels a stare at him, and he stares back. Genji glances between them, honestly unsure who will break first. His brother is stubborn, but the doctor is unrelenting when it comes to her duty.

“No pain that’s intolerable,” Hanzo amends. Angela appears to accept that that’s all the admission she’ll get. She looks down to her tablet before thumbing the screen off.

“You gave us quite the scare. Your symptoms were unusual, to say the least.”

“I apologize,” Hanzo starts, but Angela is already waving him off.

“Nonsense. This is my job.”

“It passes in its own in time,” Hanzo says.

“This has happened before?” Genji interjects, leaning forward. The muddled feelings flooding him are entirely his own. Fear, confusion, dread. Hanzo dodges his gaze, frowning slightly. Genji already knows he won’t like the answer Hanzo gives, whatever it is.

“It’s happened a few times. As I said, it passes in time. I think I am past the worst of it.”

“Well,” Angela says, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Her expression is a familiar one to Genji, one that’s simultaneously serious and hopeful. “That’s for me to say. Actually, we have much to discuss.”

She pulls over a cart with a display, briefly taps her tablet to it to pair them. The screen lights up, showing the default dark background. She prods the tablet, bringing up imaging results and her notes on the screen.

“Your bloodwork came back positive for a few tumor markers. Athena and I found nothing in the scans large enough to operate on.”

Angela taps her screen, bringing up an image of _something_. There’s a bright white knot in the center of the image. Angela flips through a few more images, all similar. The scale is in millimeters. Genji starts to relax. This is well within Angela’s ability to treat. Even old-fashioned chemotherapy might be enough.

“I might need a biopsy to have something to tailor the nanobots to target, but that will be quick. I’d also like to do some analysis on the rate of DNA damage. There’s been some good results from the telomere extension trials, and I’d think you’d benefit. I expect you’d be off the active duty roster for a few days at most during treatment, and in a few months be clear of any abnormalities.”

Genji glances at his brother. Hanzo looks almost _relieved_. He deflates back against the bed, the usual tension he carries falling away.

“So, it’s starting.”

“Excuse me?” Angela says sharply. Hanzo’s gaze flicks to Genji then back to the doctor. He opens his mouth but hesitates to speak, clearly having trouble choosing his words.

“I thank you for all your work, Dr. Ziegler, but I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time. If I am well enough to leave, I would happily free up space in your facility.”

Angela’s mouth hangs open in shock. Genji’s hands curl into fists in his lap. Dread washes over him, cold and fierce.

“Angela, would you give me a moment with my brother, please?”

“Of course, Genji,” she says briskly. She gets to her feet, leaving her tablet behind, and marches out of the room, the sharp sound of her shoes hitting the metal floor echoing down the hallway.

Genji stares at Hanzo for a long moment. Hanzo won’t meet his eyes. He’s staring into his own lap. He twists a stray thread from the blanket between his fingers _wind-unwind-wind-unwind_.

“How many times has this happened?” Genji asks. It’s not the question he meant to ask, but his mouth acts of its own accord. Hanzo shrugs, a strange gesture from him.

“A few. Maybe five? I’m not sure.”

Genji stares at him, not sure what to say. Five times his dragons have—what? Caught him as collateral damage? He tastes bitter again. He remembers Kodama’s words—protecting and angry. Some protection this is. Had he had to drag himself away from the carnage before? Had he sought help, or just crawled into some bolt hole to let come what would?

“Do you know why?” Genji knows it’s a stupid question even as he asks it. Even he doesn’t have much introspection into why the dragons make the decisions they do. Some things just don’t translate.

Hanzo’s shoulders slump. He casts his gaze around for something to look at that’s not his lap and not Genji. There’s precious little. He settles on the window.

He won’t lie, whatever he does say. He’s cagey and evasive, he doesn’t know another way to be, but he won’t insult Genji by lying. Genji knows he just has to wait him out.

“The first time,” Hanzo reaches up to scrub his hands across his face, sighing. “The first time, I threw down my weapons. I was drunk, and the man had been dogging me for weeks. I think our family sent him, it wasn’t long after I killed our great-aunt.  He’d spoiled a contract, I was out of money, and I was tired. When I woke up—” Hanzo stops and gestures to himself. It’s explanation enough. “Every time, I’ve been moments from death. They won’t let me die.” 

Hanzo huffs a small, bitter laugh. Genji bites his tongue for a moment. Kodama is a tension starting in his shoulders and traveling up the back of his neck to the base of his hairline. She knows something she hasn’t figured out how to relay yet. 

“Sometimes they come when I don’t call, and sometimes they don’t come when I do. It’s like they know I’m no longer fit to host them, but they couldn’t be rid of me. At least, not until now.”

Hanzo sounds openly bitter, almost to the point of petulance. Genji can’t think of anything to say. He wishes Kodama could find the words to explain what she knows, could shed some light on what Hanzo’s twins have done—besides make Hanzo sick faster.

Genji had thought Hanzo was building a life here, finding a path, but what if he’d just been running out the clock? The thought twists through him like a knife to the gut. The last thing Genji had ever wanted to see was Hanzo die like this, even at his lowest point.

“Let Angela help you,” Genji pleads.

Hanzo snaps his head around to look at him, his brows knitted down in anger and offense.

“ _No_ ,” he says, emphatic. Stubborn. “I don’t know why they kept me alive, but they are ready now to collect.”

“There’s no _collecting_ ,” Genji snaps. “It doesn’t work like that!”

“What do you know? This isn’t something you can blow off or weasel out of, Genji. This is a price I agreed to pay.”

“You were a child! And it doesn’t matter!”

“Of course it matters. I owe them a debt, and I will pay it.”

Genji scrubs his hands down his face.

“No, you are not doing this to me. You are not going to make me watch you die like Dad did.”

“Then I’ll go.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it!” Genji shouts.

Genji’s wheezing, his poor lung capacity unable to keep up with his anger. He needs his respirator but he left it back in his bunk. He hears Zenyatta’s voice telling him to find calm. He knows he won’t budge Hanzo by fighting with him. Hanzo only digs in when pushed.

“Fine. Fine. How are you going to explain this to Jesse? I’ve already told him you were in the medbay. I didn’t want him to hear about it for the first time on the landing pad.”

 _That_ , at least, pulls Hanzo up short, guilt twisting his expression. He fists his hands in the blanket and presses his lips into a thin line.  Genji leans in, as if to physically press his advantage.

“I was hoping he wouldn’t—”

“Wouldn’t what? Find out?”

Hanzo looks away. He couldn’t seriously have hoped to hide this from McCree, could he? Did he think Genji would go along with it?

“I didn’t want him to have to worry for longer than he had to,” Hanzo says softly. “I wanted to spare him for as long as possible.”

“Why?” Genji snaps, letting something cruel and cold slip into his tone. “You’d still be hurting him, _you_ just wouldn’t have to deal with it. Don’t do this, Hanzo.”

Hanzo sits up straighter, staring hard at the wall in front of him.

“I think I’ve disgraced myself enough, Genji. I’m not adding cowardice on top of everything else.”

Genji growls in frustration, running his hands through his hair. God damnit, why is Hanzo so stubborn? Genji stands abruptly, sending his chair scooting back across the floor half a meter with a squeal. Genji storms out of the room, and Hanzo doesn’t watch him go.

 

* * *

 

Genji is still replaying the conversation in his head, pacing on a lonely balcony. Usually being outside, out of the claustrophobic hallways of the Watchpoint, is soothing, but he can’t get the argument out of his thoughts long enough to focus on anything else. He keeps thinking of things he should have said, lines of reasoning that would surely convince his brother, but he can’t make himself go back to the medbay. What if it still wasn’t enough? Every argument gives Hanzo the chance to just convince himself further.

Genji starts when he hears the door slide open behind him. He looks over his shoulder to see Zenyatta standing in the doorway. Zenyatta cants his head forward after staring at him for a moment, and Genji lets his shoulders sag. He usually spends the mornings in quietude with Zenyatta, but he had completely forgotten. Zenyatta would surely have heard about what happened, would have understood Genji’s absence, but Genji hadn’t even told him Hanzo was awake now. He’d gone immediately to find some solitude to pace and seethe.

“You are upset,” Zenyatta says. A statement, and an invitation to elaborate. Zenyatta steps outside with him, walking up to the railing on the balcony and placing his hands on the crossbeam.

“It’s Hanzo,” Genji sighs.

Zenyatta seems to consider that for a moment.

“You had an argument?”

“Yes, but, not just an argument.” Genji sucks in as deep a breath as he can manage, trying to steel himself. “He’s dying.”

Saying it hurts in a way he wasn’t expecting, makes it real. To think, it wasn’t so long ago he’d have _wanted_ his brother dead, though by his own doing. Genji shudders.

“Dr. Ziegler cannot help him?” Zenyatta sounds surprised. He turns his head toward Genji.

“He won’t let her.”

Zenyatta hums. Genji crosses his arms over his chest, tucks his elbows in close.

“Master, I don’t know how to help him. Dad didn’t have—” Genji’s voice wavers. He stops to collect himself. “Hanzo thinks he has to do this, and I might not have long to convince him otherwise. And he _doesn’t_ have to.”

Kodama had made that clear, all those years ago. Time would tell whether or not she’d succeeded in mitigating the damage her very existence did to him, but simply knowing she would never turn and kill him one day was a relief. Genji even would go so far as to call them friends, as much as they could be. If only she could speak to Hanzo the way she did to him. He’d listen to her.

“If your brother considers this a matter of duty, it will not be easy to sway him,” Zenyatta says. He reaches out and sets a hand on Genji’s shoulder. Genji sighs and presses a hand over his eyes.

“You can’t force him onto a path,” Zenyatta continues. “You can only try to show him the truths you think he’s missing.”

“But _how_?” Genji throws both his hands into the air.

“How did you learn?”

Genji stares into Zenyatta’s faceplate, open mouthed. Zenyatta squeezes his shoulder once and drops his hands, folding them behind his back.

“I’ll leave you to think about it.”      

                 

* * *

 

Genji is still on the balcony when McCree arrives.

Genji knew McCree was coming long before he heard him. He saw the lone headlight from McCree’s motorcycle coming up the hill from the city most of an hour ago. McCree had arranged his own travel to make sure it was sufficiently discreet, and the first and last legs to and from the Watchpoint he’d driven himself.

The door opens, and McCree’s spurs jingle along with his heavy footfalls, approaching Genji slowly. McCree stops and stands behind him for a long moment, perhaps admiring the view. Genji still hasn’t paid it much mind.

Finally, McCree settles one hand on his shoulder, holding out a mug with his other. It’s coffee, black and thick. The smell briefly overpowers everything else. Genji accepts it with a nod.

“Did you talk to Hanzo?”

“He was sleepin’ when I went by. Didn’t wanna wake him.”

Genji stares down into the mug, rubbing his flesh thumb over a chip in the rim. He’s still unsure of what to do next, but he knows his friend deserves better that being left in the dark. McCree turns and leans his back against the railing, bent forward trying to meet Genji’s eyes.

“Is there somethin’ goin’ on I missed? Looked like Angie’d taken him off most everythin’. Usually that’s a good sign.”

“He should tell you himself,” Genji says, not bothering to hide his bitterness. “ _Make_ him tell you.”

 McCree goes very still beside him. Genji doesn’t even hear him breathe for a beat. When Genji looks up properly, he’s staring with an expression Genji’s not seen often on his friend, that cold intensity that heralds true fear. McCree leaves without saying anything else.

 

* * *

 

The sound of the yelling carries down the metal hallways. McCree hardly ever raises his voice, but it booms when he does. Real anger makes him trip over his English, his natural diction too slow to accommodate it, and whip-quick Spanish starts pouring out instead. No one is close enough to hear the low rumble of Hanzo’s replies, deceptively even.

It cuts off abruptly. The tension that had seeped into the very air of the Watchpoint starts to ebb into a fragile calm no one trusts. Surely that won’t be the end of it. Surely at any moment one or both of them will begin again. The silence holds, though.

Nobody knows McCree had left the Watchpoint until he’s been gone for hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would you believe the beginning of this was the first part of We Get What We Deserve I wrote? I went back and wrote the first two when I realized I'd never be able to explain everything in just one fic.
> 
> Thanks for reading and feel free to hmu at https://saltytothecore.tumblr.com/


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi y’all I’m back on my bullshit. There’s a goddamned Fourier transform table that still haunts my nightmares, so you can blame the sentient mustache that taught me the practical applications for convolutions for this.

Genji knocks on his brother’s door late the next morning. When he’d gone to check on him in the medbay, Angela had already released him. There wasn’t anything left he would agree to let her do and no reason to detain him there any longer.

The door is wrenched open almost as soon as Genji starts knocking. Genji is left with his hand hanging in the air, staring at Hanzo. Somehow he looks worse just after discharge than he did going in. He’s not shaved, clearly not showered yet either. Dark circles hang below his eyes, and his breath reeks of cigarettes cut with alcohol. 

“Oh,” he says. Genji is clearly not who he was expecting. He clears his throat and stands a little straighter. “Good morning.”

“May I come in?”

Hanzo steps aside in lieu of answering. There’s an open bottle of sake and a cup on the desk. Hanzo slumps into the chair, running his hands through his greasy hair. He hasn’t even bothered to tie it up. Genji wants to comment on his choice of breakfast, but that’s not a fight that will be productive, not right now.

“Have you seen Jesse?” Hanzo asks, hesitant. He doesn’t even meet Genji’s eyes.

“I have,” Genji replies. He’s sleeping off a hell of a hangover in Fareeha’s bunk. McCree had to be dragged back to the Watchpoint last night. After their _discussion_ McCree had vanished into the city without his phone, his weapon, or even his damn hat. He and Fareeha had finally gone out with some of the others to find him after it became clear he wasn’t just out for a walk or a smoke. “So, you told him.”    

“Jesse,” Hanzo pauses, chews his lip. “Jesse didn’t take it well. And Miss Amari didn’t take Jesse not taking it well very well either. She has already been by to tell me I’m unwelcome, among other things. Her commentary was, ah, vivid. And indelicate.”

Genji can imagine. She was the one who found McCree, drunk and belligerent and in a fist fight with a man about as trashed as he was. She’d broken up the fight, apparently by punching out the other man, and Reinhardt had carried McCree back like a particularly surly sack of flour.

For all that Fareeha acts the bratty little sister, she’s remarkably protective of McCree when pushed. Since Hanzo had been the reason McCree had felt the need to go out and find a bottle to crawl into, it’s no surprise Hanzo is _persona non grata_ under Fareeha’s watch. Hanzo’s probably lucky to have only gotten an earful.

“Good,” Genji says. “I hope she got through to you.”

Hanzo frowns into the half full cup of sake, tracing the rim with his finger. Genji sits on the bed across from him, leaning over his knees. Hanzo looks like he’s working up to something.

“Maybe this is for the best,” Hanzo says, almost muttering. “If he’s angry and wants to break things off, then perhaps it will be easier for him.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Hanzo snaps his head up, bristling.

“Oh, and how is that?”

“You want him to have to live with whatever he said last night being _it_? He was scared and, yeah, he was _pissed,_ but he’s not going to give up on you yet. He’s a better man than that.”

If Genji knows McCree, and he does, when he can stand to be upright again he’ll be back with a cooler head. He’s not going to leave things between them on a note like that, not with someone important to him, and it will take more than a single argument to convince him to let Hanzo go. Trust Hanzo to find the only man as stubborn as he is.

“He should. We are a mistake. It was selfish of me to—” Hanzo trails off, guilt curling his shoulders. He looks to the floor, lips pressed into a thin line. Genji scoffs.

“He _cares_ about you, but that’s not a mistake.”

They’ve been good for each other, surprisingly good. Having someone just as paranoid at his back had done a lot for McCree’s peace of mind. He’d been ill at ease for a long time after coming to Gibraltar, the rough habits that had kept him alive on the run too hard to shake alone. For all the ways that Hanzo is still a stranger to Genji, he knew his brother had been just as uneasy. Together though, they’ve found a kind of safety and a kind of happiness. Nothing about them was a mistake, as far as Genji could see.

Hanzo tips the contents of the cup down his throat, sets it back on the table, and refills it. Genji fights down the urge to knock it out of his hand. One battle at a time.

“It’s not just you anymore, brother. If you die, it happens to me, to Jesse, to all of us. And we don’t want to lose you if we don’t have to.”

“ _Genji,_ ” Hanzo says, resting his face in his hand, the cup still full. “Please. This is the way it has been for _everyone_. No one is above it. Not father, not you, and certainly not me. I’m at peace with this death.”

That same fear that seized him in the medbay begins to creep back in. This isn’t how Genji wanted this to go.

“No, fuck that, there’s no reason to just lay down and die!”

“You keep saying that! How are you so sure you know better than generations of our ancestors?” Hanzo sneers. He lifts the cup.

“She _told_ me herself,” Genji says, exasperated.

“Who is this woman? Dr. Zeigler? Some other Shambali you met?”

“My dragon.”

“Your dragon?” Hanzo looks incredulous. “Your dragon told you?”

What a hell of a way to have his old curiosity sated. He’d known, of course, that Kodama was special, but now he’s staring it in the face. Of course the twins weren’t like her, if they were they wouldn’t be having this conversation. Still, he’d hoped, apparently in vain, that they weren’t so callous.

“She did, yes.”

Hanzo rolls his eyes, dismissive. He takes a sip of the sake.

“I’m sure you think that, but I saw you come home convinced of all sort of stupid things, depending on what you’d taken, so forgive me if I don’t—”

“Would you just _listen_ to me, for once in your life?” Genji interrupts, shouting as loud as he can. Hanzo sets the cup down and turns to face Genji fully.

“Fine. You have my attention.”

Not that Genji knows what to do with it now that he has it. He wracks his mind for something, _anything_ that would convince his brother.

“How far did you go?” Genji asks. Hanzo frowns at him, confused.

“What are you talking about?”

“How far into the Well did you go?”

Panic crosses Hanzo’s face, and he looks over his shoulder as if someone could have snuck into the room on their watch. It was forbidden to discuss the Well and anything in it in public, but anyone who would have cared is dead.

“ _Genji_. This is not the place.”

Genji rolls his eyes, but he lowers his voice.

“There’s the path down? And the actual _well_ in the cavern, right?”

Hanzo purses his lips. Genji has never actually talked to Hanzo, or anyone else for that matter, about his trip into the Well to meet Kodama. He’s fairly certain his trip was unique. Or, at least, that no one in a long time had gone as far as he did.

“Yes,” Hanzo finally says, sighing.

“Then what?”

Hanzo stares at him, bewildered.

“The stairs? Did you go down the stairs?”

Hanzo shakes his head slowly.

“There were stairs. And a stream at the bottom, and the water was, it was—” Genji stops, wets his lips. He can remember it vividly, even after all this time, but he still lacks the words to explain it without sounding insane. “If you go far enough, you end up somewhere else entirely. Outside, sort of.”

“That’s absurd,” Hanzo blurts.

“Oh, that’s the absurd part of inviting a spirit to inhabit your body. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

Hanzo crosses his arms and scowls at him, but doesn’t say anything back. It’s as close as he gets to acknowledging he’s wrong. Genji continues.

“That’s where I met my dragon. I was able to talk to her before she came back with me. That’s why I was down there so long. She was so curious about—” Genji gestures broadly “ _everything_.”

Hanzo stares at him for a long moment, not saying a word. He lets his arms fall back to the table and sighs, looking pensive. Genji reaches out, sets one hand on Hanzo’s arm. Hanzo doesn’t try to pull away or shrug him off. It feels like a small kind of victory.

“We were so worried you wouldn’t come back,” Hanzo says softly. “I—I wanted to go after you. Father wouldn’t let me.”

Genji feels a perverse kind of fondness at that. Hanzo was forever coming after him when they were young, even when he really hadn’t deserved it. He’s glad Hanzo followed him here.

“She explained a lot, more than the elders ever could. We’re as strange to them and they are to us. They _want_ to be here, and they can’t stay when we die. Getting sick, it’s not intentional. They don’t understand what they’re doing.”

Hanzo looks away, laughs a small, humorless laugh.

“That’s too simple, too neat. You have to see that. What if you’re wrong, what then?”

The elders spoke in hushed tones about refusing to succumb. There were no specifics to the doom that would fall on them, but it would surely come, it would surely be grave. It was unfathomable that a Shimada would be so cowardly, so pathetic, in any case. Not for the first time, Genji wonders if all his family were really so brave. Surely, there had been at least one to try to prolong his or her life, but there was no trace left of them if there were.

A thought suddenly seizes Genji. He pulls at Kodama, shows her his idea. She responds with uncertainty and the words _I will try_.

“Hanzo,” He looks back at Genji, “Would you believe your dragons?”

 

* * *

 

It doesn’t seem right, doing this in the daylight instead of under the stars, but Genji’s terrified that if they wait, Hanzo will reconsider. Genji has led them to a wooded part of the cliffs on the far side of the compound, as hidden from the Watchpoint and the ocean as is possible.

He sat Hanzo across from him. His posture is rigid, and he’s failing to hide his skepticism. No matter. Hopefully, he’ll be seeing for himself soon enough.

Genji settles himself on the ground comfortably. It doesn’t take much, he doesn’t have much left of his legs that would be offended by the gravelly soil. While there’s feedback from the artificial parts of him, he can demur the more uncomfortable signals if they’re not urgent. The rock pressing into where his shin would be certainly qualifies.

Kodama is lurking just under the surface, waiting for him to ready himself. He repeats his mantra, speaking clearly but without much urgency. Maybe, if she were not already so present, he would need it to catch her attention, but right now it’s more for Hanzo’s sake than hers.

Kodama appears around his shoulders, settling into the visible spectrum. He reaches up and brushes his fingers down her body. She registers as a solid thing, the nerves in his fingers convinced, but he knows if he keeps pushing his hand will move through the space unobstructed. Dozens of pairs of clawed feet cling to his shoulders and down his arm, but she’s still more draconic than not.  He supposes it’s a bit late to ask her to conform to his brother’s expectations.

He looks to Hanzo, and his eyes are wide, not with awe but with fear. The color is gone from his face, his hands curled into a tense rigor over his knees. He won’t have seen a dragon manifest except to attack, Genji remembers.

“I call her Kodama,” Genji says, with a smile. “She agreed to the name.”

That shakes his brother from his fear. His eyebrows knit down over his nose and Genji can see the beginnings of a scoff.

“They’re not _pets_ , Genji.”

“No,” Genji agrees. “But their names are _very_ difficult to pronounce. Like I said, she agreed to it.”

Hanzo’s jaw hangs open for the briefest of moments before snapping shut. Kodama moves lazily down his body, black eyes opening along her sinuous length and closing again as they pass out of view of Hanzo. She’s showing off, and Genji chides her. Now isn’t the time.

She settles on the ground in a loose circle around Genji, longer now than she was when she first manifested. Her head is pointed at Hanzo, resting on two clawed feet. Most of the others have vanished, leaving her with only the customary four.

Hanzo’s eyes flicker between her and Genji, uncertain. It’s so strange to see Hanzo off kilter. There was a time when Genji would have relished it, but now he just wants him to adjust as quickly as possible. Maybe, one day, this won’t seem strange to Hanzo at all.

Genji checks with her one last time. Her determination is bracing, a cold breeze after a lot of exertion. This is _new_ and that’s exciting and frightening by turns, but she is ready, and so is he.

Kodama will broach the subject with Hanzo's dragons, saying her piece, drawing them here. If she can convince them to speak, then it will be up to Genji to be the bridge between Hanzo and his dragons. He’s the only one who can translate.

“Give her your hand,” Genji says.

Hanzo visibly braces himself, but he extends his left arm. It’s steady, not the slightest tremor. Kodama slithers closer, extends one foreleg, and sinks her claws into the meat of Hanzo’s forearm. He jerks his head up to look at Genji. Five small, bright droplets of blood spring up under the points of her claws.

Kodama passes back a taste of Hanzo’s fear, as if it weren’t written into every line of his posture. There’s a steel to it though, a single minded will to power through. Genji’s seen it from the outside his entire life, but to really _feel_ it, even secondhand, is something else.

“Don’t worry,” Genji says, for all the good it will do. Hanzo doesn’t reply, and that secondhand fear doesn’t so much as flicker. Kodama won’t hurt him, Genji’s sure of that. Her anger with Hanzo has faded along with his own.

Genji closes his eyes and centers himself, trying to push aside his own churning apprehension. He doesn’t want to contaminate his thoughts more than necessary. Cortisol, he’s been informed, makes for an unpleasant neural landscape.

Kodama begins with little preamble. Genji feels her reach out, begin to communicate with Hanzo’s twins. She spills between them like ink in water, curling herself into the spaces they leave.

Genji has been able to sense the other dragons since Kodama came back from the Well with him. Hanzo’s have always been a roaring tempest, two powerful drumbeats slightly out of sync. Kodama becomes a third note in their song, a third beat. Whatever it is they say to each other is opaque to Genji. The only sensation he gleans is meaningless static, pins and needles.

Kodama pulls back, and more of herself manifests to twist around Genji. She doesn’t loosen her grip on Hanzo though. She is bracing herself, wary but not afraid. It feels like the lurch when a car drops down a steep hill, that millisecond of weightlessness stretched out to long seconds. Genji feels the shift, the pressure ramping up. They are coming.

Genji opens his eyes.

Hanzo’s twins are beginning to manifest, two coils of blue twisting out of Hanzo’s arm. Hanzo is gaping in wide-eyed shock, not having moved an inch. They take on the classic shape of a dragon almost immediately, two long, fierce beasts. They settle around Hanzo, content to laze in the air at about his shoulder height. They’ve chosen fairly unobtrusive forms, the size of small pythons, and they don’t seem to be paying any of them any mind at all. At the moment, Kodama is by far the more intimidating figure, though Genji knows that means nothing. They can flicker between shapes in an instant, and shape has no bearing on what they can do.

Kodama still has her hooks in Hanzo, and she passes Genji a taste of bewildered terror. Genji asks her to send his calm, if she can. Hanzo will probably resist her. Genji has to admit, the feeling of a second mind along your own is deeply strange, and probably much worse when it’s unexpected.

Genji watches Hanzo’s dragons, patient, minding his breathing. Kodama’s coils are a comfort. As much as Genji wished it didn’t, the sight of them stokes an animal fear. The last two times he’d seen them this close, they’d been on the attack.

One breaks away, undulating beside Kodama and towards Genji. Genji holds out his hand, the one Overwatch didn’t build for him, and the dragon gently takes it between his teeth. The teeth don’t feel like anything, but Genji sees them sink under his skin. There’s no blood, but there is a faint twinge.

 _I am Shimada Genji_ , he thinks, and the dragon repeats his name back, like an echo in his own skull. Its introduction is abrupt, and much like the one Kodama made all those years ago. Only one is close, but Genji feels both their minds, completely intertwined. It’s impossible to tell where one stops and the other begins.

When it’s over, Genji thinks their name together is something like _a thing and the opposite its existence necessitates_ —right-left, forward-back, up-down. If they have names of their own, Genji isn’t sure. They have been _this_ for a very, very long time.

 _You are diminished_ , it says. Or rather, it forces its memory of Genji into his mind, a wholly human web of biological electricity and chemical reaction, and then overlays the loss, the sharp edges of silicon tied into the periphery of his flesh strange and impenetrable to it. Fuck you too, Genji thinks privately. It’s Kodama’s turn to chide, though she fails to hide her amusement at his disregard.

Genji breathes out slowly, sets the unwelcome foreign memory aside and decides to thinks of it as a faux pas made in the ignorance of a foreigner. He thinks instead of his brother, thinks of what happened two nights ago. He knows the dragon sees it because it bristles, making all of Genji’s remaining large muscle groups spasm. Its anger is a cold fury, washing over him like the waves of a winter sea.

_You are angry, but he doesn’t understand._

It takes a long moment to parse. He feels Kodama help, stirring up things in him so it can better see. Hanzo’s dragon is nothing but frustration, a grit under his skin. He feels it reverberate off the other one, and its feelings bouncing back like an echo. The discord between them and Hanzo is like a thorn, a constant irritation they can’t soothe.

_He will end soon._

That ignites panic in Hanzo’s dragon. Genji has to keep a firm grip on himself to not let it catch hold of him. He’s also careful not to let it see his relief. If they want to stay, then they might cooperate.

It is then that they make the offer. Kodama tells them of the open line of communication she and Genji have shared since the day they met, offers to help them speak with Hanzo that way, if they’d like. He offers to show them how to convince him to _not end_ , offers to let them use the makeshift language of words, sensation, and feelings he and Kodama have constructed as a blueprint.

Genji feels only silence.  Then, all at once, both of them descend.

They find every nerve, every sensor, and they light them up. It’s not pain exactly, but it’s overwhelming sensation that’s very nearly the same thing. All Genji can feel is them and they are _so cold_. Genji can’t breathe. They’ve overwhelmed everything, even his autonomic reflexes. 

He hears his name, feels the air vibrate in his ears, but if he didn’t know the only person who could have spoken was Hanzo, he’d never have placed it. The world around him is simultaneously muddled to his own senses and thrown into crystalline clarity in his mind’s eye. He can see everything around him, every molecule making up the air, the soil, and he can see up into the stars and below through the churning rock to the white-hot planetary core and then to more stars on the other side.  To his right the sun is shrinking and to his left it expands. The eddies of the solar wind around him are an unnamable riot of colors and sensations. The universe is picked out in perfect clarity around him and it is heat and light and spinning maddeningly away from itself.

Kodama rattles up his spine, her claws wrapping around his heart and _squeezing_ and then grabbing his diaphragm and _pulling_ and then for an instant the world is as it always was as she bullies them back, and then—

Equilibrium.

He blinks. He can see Hanzo, a flesh and blood man, leaning forward and reaching toward him. And he can see Hanzo, a knot of heat blurring into the warm afternoon air around him. And he can see Hanzo, the epicenter of the swirling mass of anger and confusion and cold that has their tendrils curled into him.  

Genji breathes on his own. Kodama reluctantly lets go.

Hanzo says his name again. Genji watches the vibrations in the air and forgets to answer. Hanzo’s dragons are sitting at the edge of his awareness, flicking through his surface thoughts. Genji lets them, takes it as an opportunity to examine them back.

Kodama, he is realizing, is the most focused of the three. Things roll off the twins, sensations and tastes and smells, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Without the intent, the clarity of mind, it’s like the background chatter of an unknown language, only buried inside where he can't ignore it.

Kodama pulls at him, relays Hanzo’s barely contained panic with her own insistence that he do something about it. It makes his own blood start to rush, forces his limbs into a sudden shiver. Now that he’s looking for it, he can pick the thread of Hanzo’s mind out of the miasma of the twins. He’s gotten so used to the shape of the dragon’s minds that a human one is foreign thing. Cautiously, Genji prods.

He sees himself as Hanzo does, just fractions of a second later. Hanzo’s dragons have wound their way around and through him, Kodama practically braided between. A memory overlays the present, a memory of being in the eye of the storm that is the twins on attack. The memory tastes coppery and bitter, like blood and cyanide, heavy on his tongue. The twins tearing their way through a victim, a voice crying out— _Hanzo!_

Genji sees himself fall, sees his sword fly from his hands, sees Kodama thrown into disarray with the sudden loss of her focus. Guilt and grief and a bone deep loathing turned inward permeate every iota of the memory. Genji’s throat closes with sympathetic misery, his heart stutters in his chest.

“I’m all right, Hanzo,” Genji says.

Genji feels Hanzo’s shock, then feels him go slack with relief. He also feels the sick twist of dissonance when Hanzo hears his voice and remembers what he used to sound like. Hanzo remembers the voice of a child, a chubby faced little brother, more clearly than anything else, and he compares that to the thin rasp that Genji speaks with now. The guilt bubbles up like tar. Hanzo is mired in it, choking on it.

Genji knows now, of course, that Hanzo regretted that night. For a long time, he’d assumed Hanzo had carried on as leader of the Shimada-gumi, but as Overwatch and Blackwatch whittled away their membership and influence, Hanzo had been nowhere to be found. No amount of interrogation, either in the spartan Overwatch detention centers or the unacknowledged Blackwatch dark sites, shed any light on his whereabouts. It was obvious in hindsight that it was because of true ignorance rather than the loyalty of the interrogees, but at the time it had infuriated Genji to the point of obsession.

Feeling it though, feeling the guilt and grief and self-hatred burrow their roots down to bone, feeling them consume and tinge every thought, it breaks Genji’s heart. They’ve both suffered enough. There is no way forward for them if either insists on clinging to this hurt.

Genji turns his attention to the twins, and finds that they are paying close attention. They both prod at the new, raw memories from his brush with his brother’s mind. _That_ , they are saying. _That is the problem._

But it is not the only problem, or even the most pressing. Genji counters with a simple memory—burning his hand after spilling a cup of nearly boiling tea—and then offers a modification—sticking his hand directly in the boiling water. The skin would redden, then blister, then slough off. The damage could be permanent. He holds up the memory of them, thundering and devouring, and the imagined burns, one the logical extreme of the other.

 _What you do to our enemies, you also do to us. It is only a matter of degree_.

That seems to give them pause. Genji hears, without seeing the air vibrate or feeling it in his bones, the words _didn’t know_. Genji directs them to Hanzo. He is the one they must convince if they wish to stay. They begin to shift their attention back to Hanzo, to say, well, _something_ surely. Genji signals his intention to eavesdrop to Kodama. If they withdraw themselves, she’ll be his only window.

Hanzo’s surprise is something he sees in almost every way available to him. Hanzo jerks, hands snapping up in a half-cocked defensive posture. Adrenaline lights up his neurology, priming his sympathetic nervous system and generating a static that makes it hard to latch onto his mind.

To Genji’s relief, the twins don’t shut him out, and he can hear them make their introduction. Genji can only hope Hanzo sees it for what it is. Hanzo’s surprise morphs into simple shock and then fades into only wariness. He is staring directly at Genji, almost accusing. Genji offers him what he hopes is a reassuring smile. Hanzo frowns back at him, and it’s so familiar Genji almost laughs.

Hanzo’s gaze begins to wander as his dragons begin to speak to him in earnest. Their own explanation for themselves is clumsy and blunt—the sheer frustration of trying to use a broken tool, then the pressing concern that something crucial will prove itself unstable, then the desperation that accompanies a snap intervention.

Hanzo answers them aloud, not knowing any other way.

“What do you want from me then?” He sounds exhausted and bitter. The memory of their father lying in a hospital bed flickers through the surface of Hanzo’s thoughts. It makes Genji grit his teeth.

 _No_ they reply, shaking the air and the earth around them. It even makes Genji’s teeth buzz in his skull. Their fierce objection feels like nausea, a body’s most basic form of rejection. Kodama muffles them while Genji collects himself, but Hanzo looks green.

“Easy,” Genji calls with his mouth and mind. He means it for all three of them.

 _Tell him what Kodama told me_. Hanzo jerks his gaze back to Genji, his mouth slightly open and his eyebrows knit down. Genji stares back, just as surprised. He hadn’t realized Hanzo could hear him.

Hanzo vacillates between anger and embarrassment, but Genji can read that plainly on his face. Genji holds his abashment in the foreground. Genji will be hearing about this later, he’s sure.

Hanzo’s dragons begin again, taking Genji’s advice and distracting Hanzo. It’s a familiar story sketched by a new hand, and Genji doesn’t pay it close attention. Hanzo’s protests are weak. They are not something he’s well prepared to argue with, and they are chipping away at Hanzo’s conceptions, which is a feat in and of itself. Genji limits his interjections to smoothing over their misunderstandings.

He feels more than hears Hanzo’s tired assent, his acknowledgment of their wishes. Genji’s relief is a like a tangible easing of pressure. For their part, Hanzo’s dragons seem elated.

 _You’ll have to do your part_ he and Kodama say together.

Kodama coaxes them into a wider wavelength, showing them the steps to a strange dance. They are cautious at first, but they do follow her. Genji watches as their color shifts, a greenish hue creeping into the blue. They still flash a deeper blue, in perfect time with the constructive interference of their rhythms, but there are moments they almost seem yellow, right when they’re most distant.

It’s beautiful, moreso for what it means. They convinced Hanzo. He will still have a brother for a long time yet.

When Genji had finally come to forgive Hanzo, he’d done it in the fear that Hanzo had already died, that’d he’d never know, that he’d never get the chance to try to rebuild the relationship between them. Genji has gotten more than his fair share of second chances. He likes to think he’s put them to good use.

Hanzo is staring at Genji, agape and tears welling in his eyes. Genji casts out, trying to see if he’s been hurt, but then he remembers Hanzo can hear him.

“I meant it,” Genji says. “You’re forgiven, Hanzo.”

Hanzo’s mouth opens, but no words come. Genji leans forward, pulls Hanzo close. Hanzo slumps in his embrace, overwhelmed.

“It’s all right, brother, it’s all right.”

 

* * *

 

Hanzo is still at a loss for words even now, sitting back in his room. It’s a lot to take in, Genji remembers it vividly. Later, once Hanzo has acclimated to the knowledge, he wants to know everything, compare experiences. He’s fascinated by what’s just Kodama and what’s common to all of her kind.

There’s a knock at the door. Hanzo jumps up immediately, pulling the door open. McCree is standing on the other side.

He looks better than the last time Genji saw him, but that’s a low bar to clear. He has a turn of phrase for the way he looks right now— _rode hard and put up wet_. Something to do with horses, but Genji never bothered to look into the origin.

“Hey,” McCree says, his voice still rough. He clears his throat.  “I gotta clear the air—”

Hanzo cuts him off by hauling him down into his arms. McCree looks surprised for a second, but quickly remembers himself and reciprocates. Hanzo presses his face into McCree’s shoulder, taking a shuddering breath. McCree begins rubbing one hand up and down his back.

“I didn’t—” Hanzo stops to swallow. “Genji showed me. I had it wrong, Jesse.”

McCree shoots Genji a look, curious and grateful. Genji offers his friend a small smile.

“I don’t, I never want to leave you,” Hanzo mumbles. McCree shushes softly.

“That wasn’t right’ve me to say.”

Hanzo’s shoulders shift as he squeezes McCree tighter. McCree rests his cheek on top of Hanzo’s head and closes his eyes. He sways the two of them a bit, almost like a dance.

“I, uhm, I just remembered I have somewhere to be,” Genji says, standing. He doesn’t think either of them are even paying attention, but that’s all right. They need this, this quiet moment.

Genji slips past and shuts the door behind him.

 

* * *

 

Genji doesn’t see his brother again until late the next morning. Angela had taken him aside at breakfast, told him that Hanzo had agreed to treatment. She’d already taken the biopsies she needed and would be prepared to begin that day. Something in her manner said she feared the change of mind wouldn’t hold and she wanted to do as much as she could while he would let her.

It’s been hours since then, and while Genji had wanted to give her the space to work, he also wanted to know how Hanzo was faring. He didn’t usually take well to being cooped up on someone else’s order. So, now Genji is walking to the medbay with a tea tray in tow, Hanzo’s favorite already steeping.

The doors here are very nearly silent, but Hanzo is already looking up when the door fully opens. He’s sitting up in one of the hospital beds with his tablet in his lap, part of the bed raised enough to almost count as a wide, reclined chair, and McCree is sitting with him. Hanzo has tucked himself under McCree’s arm and against his side. McCree appears to be sleeping. Old habits die hard, and Blackwatch certainly got McCree in the habit of resting whenever he got the opportunity.

Hanzo is hooked into a machine, clear tubing running from a spot just under his clavicle to a piece of equipment sitting on a wide, low cart. The readouts are completely foreign, but Genji glances over them anyway. There’s no flashing lights or big red warnings, and, in any case, Genji has every confidence Angela is monitoring from her office.

Hanzo gently pats the top of McCree’s thigh, and McCree looks up, immediately alert but not startled. He smiles the instant he sees Genji, though he wrinkles his nose a bit when he sees the tea.

“Here, hold this.” Genji hands McCree the tea tray. He makes a show of sniffing around the teapot and murmurs something about wanting sugar. Hanzo rolls his eyes, but it does nothing to obscure the fond crinkle around his eyes and mouth. Genji pulls over a chair and pours tea into all three cups.

“You sure you don’t have any lemon and sugar? Just a touch, Genj?” McCree asks. Hanzo scoffs beside him.

“Oh don’t be like that, baby, I’ve seen you steal my sweet tea.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Hanzo takes a sip, obscuring any expression he might be making. McCree looks over at Genji— _this guy, am I right?_ Genji shakes his head.

Hanzo looks well, despite everything. Maybe it’s the good company, maybe it’s the release of a tension held for far too long, but he looks almost happy. His dragons are still an intimidating presence, but something about them has smoothed over. He feels them slow and focus, then a brief flash of acknowledgement, but they don't seem interested in what Genji is doing here. Not that Genji expected they would.

Genji relaxes into his seat and watches McCree tease Hanzo about sweet tea. At the very edges of his attention, Kodama is examining the taste of the tea in his mouth. Genji takes another sip for her benefit, a little amused at all of them.

There’s a long road ahead, but Genji’s sure they’re going to be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, I had to take the signal processing sequence to graduate college and I haven’t been the same since. Waves are just so /clenches fist. Btw, Hanzo’s dragons had to turn green once I thought the math through. I didn’t actually want that, but it would have really bothered me otherwise.  
> Those of you that came and read this, y’all are my favs. This has been a weird passion project and pretty much the main reason I got into this fandom. I don’t know if I have more stories in this series, but everything else I write is informed by this headcanon. I’m always happy to take a request if there’s some other aspect you’d like to explore.  
> Thanks for reading, and I’m usually lurking and posting drabbles at https://saltytothecore.tumblr.com/


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